|
Cloverfield
By: Joey
Magidson
JJ Abrams does
Cloverfield justice.
In my opinion, Cloverfield was able to live up to the
massive hype that it generated. It managed to do so by letting us know
exactly what it was going to be about without giving us any clues as to
what we’d actually be seeing. We knew it’d be a film about a giant
monster descending on New York City told in a POV style using a handheld
camera. The surprise (and in my case, the joy) came in seeing how
effective it managed to be. Cloverfield ended up being as
much a roller coaster ride as it was a monster movie.
It bucks the trends that a conventional monster
movie/blockbuster would adhere to. We don’t get to know huge back
stories about our protagonists (the opening 20 minutes at a character’s
going away party is as much as we get for everyone), we never get a
completely good look at the monster (no aerial tracking shots that show
us every inch of the creature), and most of the big events are seen from
a distance (this after all isn’t a tale about the military against a
monster, but a group of people trying to save their friend). This
serves a great purpose in that we feel like we’re seeing something
incredibly original and get pulled in and are along for the entire ride.
The biggest compliment that I can give to this film is that
director Matt Reeves has managed to make a handheld camera film that
actually looks good. We get to see everything that he wants us to see,
and there’s little to no nausea inducing shots of the camera flailing
while the cameraman runs. The quality of the cinematography here really
shocked and pleased me. Put that together with some tremendous special
effects and it adds up to one real good looking movie.
Overall, this film did exactly what it set out to do. We
got the un-Godzilla Godzilla movie. It was very satisfying and
successfully managed to keep audiences from being too disappointed in
something that they’d been looking forward to for about 6 months.
Cloverfield is an intense thrill ride and it serves that
purpose admirably
***½/****
Email Us
|
